Over the last several years, the Internet has seen expansive growth in the area of electronic commerce (“e-commerce”). Today, many consumers shop over the Internet from electronic retailers (“merchants”) in the privacy of their home instead of shopping from catalogs or physically going to a store. While a consumer may not be able to physically handle the products while shopping on the Internet, the consumer may be able to view pictures of the products, have textual, graphical and audio descriptions of the products, as well as read reviews of the products. For example, a merchant may create an e-commerce site on the World Wide Web (the “Web” or “WWW”) that is devoted to products carried in a physical store. This product information is typically made accessible to a consumer over the Internet through Web pages created by the merchant. A problem with this approach is that consumers have to learn how to navigate through all of the different e-commerce sites where they are interested in shopping. It would therefore be desirable to have an e-commerce site where the consumer navigates in the same manner whether shopping from Merchant A or Merchant B.
Typically, merchants provide the consumer with a search engine to find products on their Web site. While this makes navigation somewhat easier than the consumer manually navigating through each Web page, there are still problems. For example, each merchant may use a different search engine having different input requirements and/or the merchant may return matches to the search made by the consumer in a different manner. What is needed is a consistent manner of inputting and returning matches to the consumer.
If the consumer locates a product in which he or she is interested, the consumer is typically allowed to purchase the product(s) at that time. For example, if the consumer is interested in purchasing Product A from the merchant, the consumer will provide appropriate information to the merchant over a secure connection in order to process the order. This information typically includes name, shipping address, billing address, payment information and desired shipping method. This information is typically entered through an input form on a Web page designed and provided by the merchant. It is also common for the merchant to require the consumer to create an account on the site of said merchant before purchasing products. If a consumer purchases items from many different sites he or she will have to keep track of many different accounts. It is desirable, therefore, to have a shopping site that enables a consumer to order products from many different merchants without requiring the consumer to keep track of all the different accounts required to purchase goods from the many different merchants.
Another e-commerce problem is that it is becoming harder for a consumer to locate products and comparison shop over the Internet. This is due to the sheer volume of merchants, products and services available to the consumer over the Internet. Today, a consumer may also use one of the commonly available search engines on the Internet to locate products. However, search engines generally return so many matches to a query that it is unrealistic for a consumer to manually inquire on each returned match. In addition, these matches also include both merchant and non-merchant Web sites making it even more difficult for a consumer to actually review all of the returned merchant sites. Further, either the Web shopping sites direct the consumer to another merchant Web site, or they place the merchant's Web site within a frame on one of their main pages. However, this approach does not provide the consumer with a consistent look and feel.
In an attempt to solve the above-mentioned problems of comparison shopping and locating products on the Internet, many different methods have been created that provide the consumer with access to many different merchant sites through one central site. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,895,454 to Harrington purports to describe a shopping system allowing the consumer to connect to remote Web sites whereupon the consumer interacts with the remote merchant Web site using the commands and structure hierarchy as originally established by the merchant. As the consumer navigates through the remote merchant's Web site, the consumer may return to the database interface to launch into a different remote merchant Web site. The problem with this approach is that the consumer still has to learn how to navigate and place orders through many different merchants. For example, if a consumer desires to purchase a product from Merchant A and Merchant B, the consumer will have to navigate each merchant's site. Today, either the Web shopping sites direct the consumer to another merchant Web site, or they place the merchant's Web site within a frame on one of their main pages. A problem with this approach is that the consumer does not have a consistent look and feel. What is needed is a shopping site that provides a uniform ordering and navigation from multiple merchants.
As e-commerce has developed, the term “shopping basket” or “shopping cart” has become commonly known on the Internet to refer to a virtual shopping cart where the consumer stores the products and/or services he/she is interested in purchasing while browsing a particular merchant's Web site. A shopping cart typically allows a consumer to add or delete products, specify attributes, such as color, quantity, size, and the like, and purchase products contained within the cart. Once the consumer has completed his/her selections of the products he or she is interested in purchasing, the consumer typically clicks on a link on one of the merchant's Web pages to purchase the contents of the shopping basket. A problem with the shopping carts, however, is that they are specific to each merchant. Another problem is that the shopping carts do not allow a consumer to keep products from different merchants not purchased in their shopping cart from one visit to the next shopping site. It would be desirable, therefore, to have a shopping cart that would maintain the items in the cart persistently until the consumer decides to delete the product or purchase the product.
Another problem is that the shopping site may “lose” the consumer after the consumer becomes interested in a product. For example, assume the shopping site returned two products from two different merchants based on the consumer's criteria. If the consumer clicks on the link for the first product the shopping site may either direct the consumer to Merchant A or may provide the merchant's site within a frame of the shopping site. Nevertheless, the consumer at this point is able to go directly to the merchant's site and bypass the shopping site when purchasing the products. It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a method and system by which consumers would not be directed to other merchants even though products they purchase may come from other merchants.
Accordingly, a method and system are needed that provide a consumer with a uniform ordering and navigation tool through multiple merchants. The method and system should enable the consumer to order products from multiple merchants using a single shopping cart. In addition, the method and system should provide the consumer with a consistent look and feel regardless of the merchant from whom the consumer is ordering products. Further, the method and system should provide a consistent matter of inputting and returning matches to a consumer searching a merchant's Web site. The present invention solves these problems as well as others presented by the prior art.